Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul: How to Create a New You [Paperback]

Deepak Chopra (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 5, 2010

Deepak Chopra presents ten lessons to help build awareness and change the distorted energy patterns that are the root cause of aging, infirmity, and disease.

Fifteen years after his #1 New York Times bestseller, Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, Deepak Chopra revisits "the forgotten miracle"–the body's infinite capacity for change and renewal. You cannot take advantage of this miracle, Chopra says, unless you are willing to completely reinvent your body, transforming it from a material object to a dynamic, flowing process. "Your physical body is a fiction," Chopra contends. Every cell is made up of two invisible ingredients: awareness and energy.

Transformation can't stop with the body, however; it must involve the soul. The soul–seemingly invisible, aloof, and apart from the material world–actually creates the body. Only by going to the level of the soul will you access your full potential, bringing more intelligence, creativity, and awareness into every aspect of your life.

Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul delivers ten breakthroughs–five for the body, five for the soul–that lead to self-transformation. In clear, accessible terms, Chopra shows us how to commit ourselves to deeper awareness, focus on relationships instead of consumption, embrace every day as a new world, and transcend the obstacles that afflict body and mind.

Deepak Chopra has inspired millions with his profound teachings over the years. His bestselling books have explored the mind/body connection and the power of spirit. With his latest book, he invites you to experience with him the miracles that unfold when we connect the body directly to the awesome mysteries that give life meaning–directly to the soul. When you have completed this journey, after reinventing your body and resurrecting your soul, the ecstasy of true wholeness becomes possible for the very first time.



From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Alternative medicine guru Chopra, author of more than 50 books, argues that the bond between body and soul has been severed; it's his hope that humankind is about to embark on a restoration project that will give the soul the attention it deserves. Chopra presents five breakthroughs that address the body and five that address the soul. He also walks readers through a fascinating discussion of how energy affects spiritual and physical health, and includes a scored personal energy efficiency quiz. According to Chopra, when subtle energy becomes blocked, awareness can act like an invisible force that turns unhealthy energy around (he also explains how the expression of genes can be altered by lifestyle changes). Chopra encourages readers to follow their inner guidance, to embrace a journey to higher consciousness, to expand awareness through meditation and other methods, to ask for guidance and then wait for it to appear, and to trust their instincts. By accepting the overarching power of the invisible or nonphysical world, Chopra maintains that we can begin to nourish a state of wholeness in which there is no longer a disconnect between body, mind and soul. Though Chopra offers 10 simple steps to wholeness (including focusing on relationships instead of consumption), this is a multilayered text to savor and study; readers will continue to contemplate the author's message long after the final page is turned. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"Alternative medicine guru Chopra, author of more than 50 books, argues that the bond between body and soul has been severed; it's his hope that humankind is about to embark on a restoration project that will give the soul the attention it deserves. Chopra presents five 'breakthroughs' that address the body and five that address the soul. He also walks readers through a fascinating discussion of how energy affects spiritual and physical health, and includes a scored personal energy efficiency quiz. According to Chopra, when 'subtle energy' becomes blocked, awareness can act like an invisible force that turns unhealthy energy around (he also explains how the expression of genes can be altered by lifestyle changes). Chopra encourages readers to follow their inner guidance, to embrace a journey to higher consciousness, to expand awareness through meditation and other methods, to ask for guidance and then wait for it to appear, and to trust their instincts. By accepting the over-arching power of the 'invisible' or non-physical world, Chopra maintains that we can begin to nourish a state of wholeness in which there is no longer a disconnect between body, mind, and soul. Though Chopra offers 10 'simple steps' to wholeness (including focusing on relationships instead of consumption), this is a multilayered text to savor and study; readers will continue to contemplate the author's message long after the final page is turned."
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Dr Chopra moves us from the mundane lives that trap many of us to the sacred insights offered by our souls."
—Mehmet C. Oz, bestselling co-author of You: The Owner's Manual

"Health and disease often begin in our consciousness, so awareness is the first step in healing. In Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul, Deepak Chopra eloquently and beautifully describes how to enhance our awareness and transform our health more dynamically and powerfully than had once been thought possible."
—Dean Ornish, M.D., founder and president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute; clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco; and author of The Spectrum



From the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press; Reprint edition (October 5, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9780307452986
• ISBN-13: 978-0307452986
• ASIN: 0307452980
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (71 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,969 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #52 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > New Age > Mental & Spiritual Healing
  • #59 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Alternative Medicine > Healing
  • #61 in Books > Self-Help > Spiritual

More About the Author

Deepak Chopra, M.D.
Founder of The Chopra Foundation
Founder of YouTube/TheChopraWell
Founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing
Senior Scientist, The Gallup Organization
www.deepakchopra.com
www.facebook.com/DeepakChopraCommunity
www.twitter.com/deepakchopra

As a global leader and pioneer in the field of mind-body medicine, Chopra transforms the way the world views physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social wellness. Known as a prolific author of over sixty-five books with twenty New York Times best sellers in both the fiction and non fiction categories.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

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#8 in Books > Self-Help

#14 in Books > Religion & Spirituality

#29 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting

#54 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs

#61 in Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs

#8 in Books > Self-Help

#14 in Books > Religion & Spirituality

#29 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting

#54 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs

#61 in Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

109 of 111 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Experience overwhelming change by reading this book. December 11, 2009

By Poppy J.

Format:Hardcover

Deepak Chopra's new book, "Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul" is a guide for people interested in changing their lives and broadening their horizons. It is a book that is best read slowly and carefully. It explains how to change your way of thinking, how to broaden your life and the way you live, and offers tips to managing the stressors of your daily life in terms you can easily understand.

The book is divided into sections that detail how to reinvent your body and your soul, while offering ten steps to wholeness. Explaining the process as described in the book is difficult, so I won't try to go into it here. Suffice it to say, that the instructions center on improving awareness of self and others, emphasizing love of self and others and offers strategies for finding, understanding and revealing the true nature of your soul.

Most people go their entire lives without thinking about their soul. This is because the soul is seen as separate from our daily lives, coming into action only at death.
Dr. Chopra's book reveals that the soul is part of your every day life, and has always been there - a person just has to develop an awareness of the soul in order to learn how to nurture it, allowing each of us to live to our fullest potential.

My favorite section of the book relates to "letting go." In this section the soul and the ego are at first incompatible, until they are reconciled by describing why we constantly react the way we do to being judged, or not being accepted by others. Each section of the book comes with real life examples and stories from other people's lives. The stories are real and are always on point, illustrating a facet of life that we will all find familiar to our own situation.

The book is interesting, insightful, potentially life changing and important to read now. I would also add that anyone who is struggling with personal issues to read this book. The insights gained will allow anyone to reframe his or her perspective - which is usually when the real answers to our problems magically come to us, wouldn't you agree?

458 of 504 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars something odd happened on the way to the printer October 15, 2009

By Sheryl Canter

Format:Hardcover

I have a long-standing interest in the power of the mind over the body dating back to my graduate school days in psychology. Today I help people stop emotional eating and lose weight by connecting with this power. So I was very interested in this book when I heard about it. I went to hear Deepak Chopra speak about the book on the day it was launched. Everyone attending received a copy.

I loved Chopra's talk and left feeling excited and inspired by his insights. I expected the book would explore these ideas more deeply. I wanted to like this book - I tried to like this book. But I was disappointed. The book did not deliver on the promise of his brilliant lecture.

The book adds very little to what Chopra said at his talk, and actually dilutes the impact of the core ideas. It's filled with anecdotes (e.g. "Paula's story") that sound very contrived, and are often tangential to the point. The book wanders quite a bit from its core thesis of the power of the mind over the body, which is a shame, because these ideas are fascinating. It ends up being just another self-help book with lots of pop psychology and "be nice to others" platitudes when it could have been so much more. I don't know what happened. How could his lecture be so brilliant and his book be so mediocre? Maybe it was the fault of the editor, trying to popularize and dumb down.

The ideas Chopra talked about in his lecture are in the book, they're just buried amidst a lot of weak and irrelevant content. Some of it is contradictory. For example, a chapter on surrendering your ego and not needing to win is followed by a whole section at the end of the book on how to win at the game of life. Another example: he says that your mind trumps all things physical, that you can think your way out of any disease, and yet you still should eat healthy and exercise. If I can think my way to health, then why can't I live on candy?

Other parts of the book over-promise or over-state, suggesting (often through the contrived anecdotes) that if you live right and think right you will never age, never get sick, never have any problems, and live in everlasting ecstacy and peace. There also are whiffs of a "blame the victim" mentality. If all the problems in your life are under your control and nothing is random, then every bad thing that happens to you is your fault.

None of these contradictions or over-statements were in Chopra's lecture. Here's what he highlighted in his lecture that gets a little buried in the book.

Chopra says that the physical world, as we experience it (touch, smell, color, etc.) exists only in consciousness. Physical reality is just a bunch of vibrating atoms, and doesn't intrinsically contain the physical qualities we experience. Nor is our experience located in our physical body - our ear drums or the neurons in our brain. In our body there are just vibrations, electricity, and chemistry. Our experience is reflected in our body through physical manifestations, but these are reflections. The physical isn't primary; our experience is not located there. Our experience, he says, is located in our consciousness - another word for "soul".

The soul is the only constant part of us, and thus the only possible repository of our memories. Our physical body is actually in constant flux as our cells die and are replaced. In a year's time, every atom in our body has been replaced. "Last year I gave a talk wearing these same clothes," he said, "but I was not wearing the same body." What a cool idea!

The soul is the timeless part of us that was never born and will never die. It is the managing intelligence that creates our body, and in a very literal way. Research has demonstrated that our mental processes - what we think and feel - changes the actual structure of our brains, a phenomenon called "neuronal plasticity".

And that's not all. Our gene expression also is pliant. The DNA we're born with never changes, but many of our genes can be turned on or off through epigenes. Chopra doesn't provide any references in his book, but I saw a segment on NOVA scienceNOW on epigenetics. Gene expression changes dramatically over time as a function of lifestyle and experience. By the time identical twins reach old age, there are so many differences in gene expression that their DNA hardly looks identical anymore.

Some genes are fixed - eye color, hair color - but many more are pliant. Chopra says that 500 different genes, including genes for cancer, heart disease, and inflammation, can be turned on or off within a few months by changes in diet, lifestyle, and attitude. Our bodies, to a large extent, are created by our consciousness - our awareness, our souls. "You're not in your body," he said, "your body is in you." How's that for an awesome insight! (I'm a big fan of insights that come from reversals.)

We are not separate beings. When we sit in the same room together, breathing the same air, we are actually exchanging the atoms of our bodies. We breathe out atoms of our heart and kidneys, and the person across from us breathes it in. We are one - parts of a larger process. Our collective consciousness, he says, is what we call "God".

The upshot of all this is that we have much more control over our destinies than we realize, on every level, including the physical. How we look at ourselves and the world is all-important, and potentially transformative. We literally can change our bodies and our destinies by changing how we think. "Changes in diet and lifestyle," he said, "are byproducts of shifting consciousness." I totally agree! This is the core idea of my "Normal Eating" program.

The implications of these ideas are profound and I hoped he'd explore them in greater depth in the book, but he doesn't really. He starts to, and then diverts into anecdotes that are variously irrelevant, trivial, or contrived.

Part of the problem is the organization of the book into five breakthroughs of the body, and then five breakthroughs for the soul, each with numerous examples which interrupt the train of thought. I think it would have worked better if he laid out the core assumptions, and then devoted the rest of the book to the implications organized by areas of life - how you use these ideas to address health problems or being stuck in an awful job. That would have flowed better and been more impactful.

In the acknowledgements at the end of the book, he says, "In many ways [my editor] is the silent author of the final manuscript." I believe it! After hearing Chopra talk in person, I feel very sure that his original text was greatly changed, and not for the better.

Sheryl Canter
Author of "Normal Eating for Normal Weight"

68 of 80 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Find your own way to create New You October 29, 2009

By wilson

Format:Hardcover

I am actually somehow disappointed with this book. Maybe it is because I read too many of Chopra's previous books and I expected another great reading but I got just a good reading instead. Hence only 4 stars...

Having said that, we all must admit that Deepak Chopra is a great teacher of holistic healing and one of the best propagators of the idea of mind-body connection. In this book the author offers a good plan to get in touch with your soul and energy to heal your body and to promote good health and longevity.

It is a good reading for people to learn about natural healings, contemplation and meditation. Good reading about changes in diet and lifestyle resulting from changes in consciousness. For more about reinventing your body, physical and mental health and longevity I suggest reading other Chopra's books as well as a great book by a less accomplished author titled "Cn we live 150 Years."